


Happy, Okay, and Safe

by argylemikewheeler



Series: Tumblr Re-posts [75]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: All just fun and brotherly love, Also background bi Steve, Background Byeler, Coming Out, Gay Will Byers, Gen, Good Brother Jonathan Byers, Immediately post-canon st3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29671110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argylemikewheeler/pseuds/argylemikewheeler
Summary: Jonathan driving with Will to their new home and catching up. It *was* the summer of love after all, as Jonathan soon finds out.
Relationships: Jonathan Byers & Will Byers
Series: Tumblr Re-posts [75]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1312241
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Happy, Okay, and Safe

**6 October 1985** **  
**

The trip to their new home was three hours without stops. Will voted to ride with Jonathan in his car while his mom and El drove in the moving truck in front of them. Jonathan’s car stereo had started shorting out two months ago, but with the move Jonathan never got around to fixing it. He didn’t even seem to remember it was broken until they got onto the interstate and all of Jonathan’s cassettes sounded like jumbled gibberish.

It was going to be a long drive.

“So.” Jonathan finally stopped fiddling after he almost rear ended their mother’s hitched car. “I feel like we haven’t spoken in a while.”

“You sound serious.” Will said with a short laugh, leaning his elbow against the passenger door.

“No, I’m just trying to catch up with you!” Jonathan shook his head. “It’s been a bit with… everything that happened. I’m just checking in my best friend.”

“…You don’t have to call me that anymore.” Will said, itching the back of his neck. “I know I’m not your best friend anymore. You have Nancy.”

“She’s my girlfriend. That’s different.”

“Not really.”

“It is!” Jonathan laughed. “When _you_ date, you can argue with me, Will.” He reached over and slapped Will’s leg lightly. Will paused, thinking whether or not he should say anything on the topic, but his silence accidentally betrayed him. “Wait… _are_ you dating?”

“I-I didn’t say that.” Will chewed his bottom lip. “But I guess I am now.”

“Alright, so who is she?” Jonathan asked with a particular high pitched voice.

“Uh,”

“Sorry. Who are they?” Jonathan corrected with a motion toward Will. “Nancy said I have to be ‘less assuming’ with people. Gotta practice.”

“Nancy? Why would Nancy say anything?” Will couldn’t imagine Mike had told Nancy already. He wouldn’t have had to tell her the minute they decided they were comfortable with the term _boyfriends_. He would have had to walk out of Will’s house and directly to Nancy’s room, gossip eager on his lips. But that wasn’t Mike; he barely trusted himself to keep the secret, let alone his sister– no offense to her. Apparently.

“I don’t know. Steve told her something and now she’s trying to be better– which means _I_ am too.”

“Steve? What’s Steve got to do with this now?” Will had to laugh. More and more recently, every story involved Steve Harrington in one way or another. It still took Will by surprise sometimes.

“Look, I don’t know, Steve’s… Steve’s like, fluid or something now.” Jonathan said, moving his hand around slowly. He wasn’t speaking flippantly, but Will still tensed in his chair. “He’s part of some like, activist group or something I think. He’s really out there.”

“Out… there?” Will repeated, letting Jonathan hear his words from another mouth.

“Not like. _Out_ there. Like. He’s visible. Hair and all, you know?” Jonathan said, looking at Will. “Good for him.”

“Yeah.” Will nodded. He knew all of this of course. Steve had told him everything, and had even invited Will to come with him and Robin to a meeting of their friends– all people like them.

It felt wrong knowing something, knowing about a side of Jonathan’s friend, that he didn’t. It felt a bit like the world had stopped growing with Will, and soon he’d get too big for it. Or maybe just stay too small.

“Steve’s bi, you know.” Will said quickly.

“I know.” Jonathan nodded. “I just said I knew.”

“Does it bother you?” Will muttered.

“What? No. Of course not– why are you asking me this?” Jonathan laughed, his eyebrows shooting up. “Do we _like_ Steve or something?” He meant it as a joke, and Will allowed himself to laugh, if only because _yeah_ , been there. Done that.

“No.” Will said. “But I do have a boyfriend.”

The car jerked slightly out of their lane as Jonathan tensed, turning to look at Will. His eyes were searching Will for any indication that he was joking– not because he wanted to laugh, but because he wanted to make sure such a heavy statement was taken with both hands, very carefully.

“Okay.”

“D-Do you need to pull over?” Will tried to tease but Jonathan refused to laugh in case of a misdirected giggle.

“No. No, I’m fine. Go on. Who is he? H-How did you get a boyfriend?” Jonathan asked, squinting his eyes. “I didn’t know you knew any gay people, Will.”

“It’s Mike.”

Jonathan slammed on his brakes, the car squealing as he veered off into the shoulder. He whipped his head over to stare at Will, eyes wide– but not angry. _Definitely_ not angry. Just, _horrifically_ surprised.

“You’re dating Mike?” Jonathan repeated, head cocked. “Mike as in _Mike_ Mike. The only Mike I’ve ever known you to know. That Mike. Wheeler. My girlfriend’s brother?”

“He was my best friend first.” Will twisted his hands in his lap. “If we wanted to get technical…”

Jonathan blinked rapidly, taking the news well just very slowly. “H-How long? When did this happen?”

“Earlier this summer.” Will shrugged, still looking everywhere but his brother’s face.

“ _This summer_?” Jonathan only had the energy to echo Will’s words, it seemed. This has shocked him more than anything in the past two years. Somehow. “That whole time– through all of _that_. You two were just…” Jonathan maneuvered his own words. “casually _dating_ each other.”

“Well, and trying not to die.” Will added.

Jonathan stared for a while out the windshield before slowly putting the car back on the road. He caught up to their mother’s truck steadily. He was silent, eyes barely blinking. Will shifted and squeaked against the seat.

“W-What’s wrong?”

“All that time?” Jonathan repeated. “The _whole time_ mom was talking about moving out of Hawkins?”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything.” Will had to convince Mike of the same thing, despite his arguments that if _both_ Will and Jonathan were dating a Wheeler then they’d _have_ to stay. Maybe Steve could date Jonathan too, Mike had suggested one frantic brain-storming session, then they’d all _have_ to stay.

“But Mom at least knows about Nancy. She sat down and _talked_ with me about moving.” Jonathan sighed, running a hand through his hair and flipping his bang up. He braced his hand against his forehead, and his elbow against the driver’s side door.

Will wasn’t _really_ nervous about the car, but he was hyper-vigilantly watching Jonathan’s lane discipline.

“I’m kind of confused right now, Jonathan.” Will admitted, twisting his wrist between his thumb and forefinger. “Are you angry that I’m dating Nancy’s brother or that I didn’t tell you… Or that I’m dating a boy.”

“I–” Jonathan started, exasperated. “I’m not angry at all!” He finally looked at Will and he saw tears in his brother’s eyes. His shock was going into something Will couldn’t recognize. He hoped it wasn’t fear, or grief. “I’m just… Happy you told me.”

Will began to feel uncomfortable– patronized for his own emotions. Steve said straight people did it to try and explain their own pleasant shock. Like, they weren’t _against_ gay people, he told Will, but it was what happened because they didn’t _really_ think they’d know a gay person, and had no idea what to say. But they do now, and it’s someone they love, Steve always added, and they’re happy they can love a little bit more of them.

When Steve explained it, it sounded beautiful and warm and surreal– like Will would be scrambling to remember every moment of when the world finally got brighter (” _or something”_ , Steve once described). But in reality it was just… really weird. Will wanted it to be over. Wanted his boyfriend to be old news, just something he had “back home” and took buses to visit and snuck back to broken Castle Byers to talk, just the two of them.

“And you two are…” Jonathan removed his hand from his forehead to flip his hand around like he was wrapping up a yo-yo. “you know.”

Will blinked. “I don’t.” There were too many options for Will to even know where to start.

Jonathan sighed, searching for his words more aggressively. “Like… Happy! Okay! _Safe_!”

“Safe?” Will had heard that word come from and be directed toward Steve more and more recently. He didn’t know what it meant, specifically, but he didn’t think it applied to him. “We just go to the movies and stuff. Well, _went_ to the movies.”

“Hey,” Jonathan patted his knee, shaking his leg shortly. “This isn’t forever. You’ll have Mike on the phone by tonight, talking about all our Thanksgiving plans! Am I right, or what? You already told him you’d call after dinner, right?”

“…Yeah…”

The party thought they were only all getting together for their combined Christmas and Hanukah, but Mike and Will had managed to get their parents to agree to a November trip; Will’s mom said she wouldn’t mind cooking for another person, _especially Mike_. Will’s mom had said Mike’s name as if it was both well-rehearsed and an after-thought. Will couldn’t decode her tone at the time, staring at her quizzically before turning back to the phone to tell Mike the good news. Mike’s cheering made him forget he ever questioned it. And maybe that was the whole point.

Jonathan paused, his hand still resting on Will’s leg. “Wait, does mom know?”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

“Don’t be funny, Will.”

“I’m not– It’s just… What part? Because I can just tell her I don’t like girls first. Break up the news. Tell her about Mike… later.” Will chewed his lip. He had only ever seen his mother lose her temper at their father. Will had no first-hand point of view of her wide-eyes and flushed red face. Will was horrified one too many words and he’d get the complete picture. Maybe even a drop of spit in his face.

“What? For _mom_?” Jonathan laughed, but swallowed the joviality after seeing Will’s ashen face. “Will, come on, she is not even going to _blink_ at it. I promise.”

“I-I know… Like, I know she’s great with Steve but… I don’t know, what _if_ …”

“What if she accepts _Steve Harrington_ more than her own pride and joy?” Jonathan said flatly. He kept his eyes on the road but angled his face to show Will is even and serious expression.

Will snorted out a laugh. It _did_ sound pretty silly when Jonathan put it like _that_. Steve put a slimey monster-dog in her refrigerator and broke her nice plates. Will was her baby, the one she saved, with her own hands, from the Upside Down. She wouldn’t leave him behind just because he was gay. No. That’s not their mother. That’s not the love he was raised with. That love was _forever_. Will just had to believe that. There was such a thing as forever love.

“Do you want me there when you tell her?”

“No. I don’t want you to ruin it.”

“Ruin it!” Jonathan cried. “How could I ruin it!”

“You almost crashed the car. Twice.”

“I won’t be _driving_ the second time. And I’ll know what you’re going to say.” Jonathan countered. “Unless you have something _else_ you want to tell me.”

Will thought of the time he and Mike saw a movie neither could remember, the entire time clutching hands under Mike’s carefully draped jacket sleeve. He timidly thought of the brief moment he felt Mike brush against his cheek as they hugged goodbye at the bike rack outside of the mall. Will didn’t even _think_ to stay too long on the phone call they had later that night, once everyone was asleep, when he asked Mike if he had _meant_ to kiss him. And Mike had slowly stuttered out that _yes_ , he had. And he still wanted to.

“No.” Will said, shaking his head. “Nothing else.”

He wanted to make it to their new house in one piece. He could lie a little longer, for Jonathan’s sake.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading!  
> [Fic on my ST Tumblr!](https://argylemikewheeler.tumblr.com/post/643301199285813248/6-october-1985-jonathan-driving-with-will-to)


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